Short postnatal hospital stay: implications for women and service providers

In a bid to increase consumer satisfaction, recent government reports have encouraged maternity services providers to offer women more choice about their care. At the same time, there has been considerable pressure on hospital managers and clinicians to drive down health service costs. Women need information about the likely effects of different service patterns on their wellbeing, and service providers about the implications of allowing women choice.

This paper reports on a descriptive study in six districts in the Yorkshire Region and focuses on the implications of variation in length of stay. The aim of the study was to describe variation in the care process and to explore associations between care process variables, consumer satisfaction and maternal psychological wellbeing. One hundred and twenty randomly selected women in each district delivering in a specified four-week period were asked to complete postal survey questionnaires in the postnatal period.

There were significant differences between districts in terms of the length of postnatal hospital stay for women experiencing normal deliveries. Those women who thought that their postnatal length of stay was too short had significantly higher depression scores.

Variation in length of postnatal hospital stay may have implications for consumer satisfaction, maternal psychological outcomes and resource use.